by Kevin Bartig
On the evening of 8 February 1930, a
train spirited Prokofiev and his wife Lina south from New York City.
The cloudy skies and freezing temperatures of the upper East Coast
soon gave way to the sun-filled horizons of the American South.
Pleased that he had chosen a route that brought him through more
temperate climes, Prokofiev tended to his correspondence and updated
his journal. In the latter, he remarked that the journey—which
would eventually bring him to Los Angeles—afforded several days of
respite in the midst of his North American concert tour, already more
than a month in progress. Along the way, he recorded travel
highlights that included the French Quarter of New Orleans, the rafts
that ferried passengers across the swamps of southern Mississippi,
and the warmth of the desert Southwest, where Prokofiev enjoyed
sitting on the rear platform without an overcoat.
Two days into the journey, Prokofiev described an
unusual event in his journal: “In the evening a telegram came from
Gloria Swanson’s film studio: they want to confirm that I’m on
the train. A commission? Or do they simply want to film me exiting
the train in Los Angeles?” He joked with Lina that Swanson surely
wished to engage their photogenic son, Sviatoslav. They had
to wait for an explanation until they arrived at their hotel, where
they received a memo from one of the actress’s associates. It
explained that Swanson was “very much interested in music of the
modern trend” and wished to consult Prokofiev “in connection with
a new motion picture, being prepared for production.” The
invitation stirred Prokofiev’s curiosity—he wrote in his journal
that it was “splendid and smelled of money”—and he and Lina
agreed to have breakfast with the actress the next morning.During
their meeting, Prokofiev learned that the film in question was
What a
Widow!, a comedy starring Swanson as a wealthy widow pursued by
unwelcome suitors. Swanson explained that her financial backer, the
Boston banker George Kennedy, was a great fan of Prokofiev’s music
and hoped the composer would write the film’s score. Prokofiev
recorded nothing about the commission’s musical requisites or the
film’s subject in his journal, instead jotting down strong
impressions of his surroundings: Swanson was “so beautiful and so
famous that you don’t know how to approach her,” and worked not
simply in a studio, but in a veritable “cinematic town.” He also
felt “naïve” when Swanson learned that he had never seen a sound
film and escorted him to an impromptu showing. The resources and
glamour of America’s “cinematic town” made their first, but not
last, impression on Prokofiev.
Ecerpt from Composing for the Red Screen: Prokofiev and Soviet Film (Oxford UP, 2013).
Kevin Bartig is assistant professor of musicology at the Michigan State University College of Music. He earned his MA and PhD degrees from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
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